


it's morning now (it's brighter now, now)

by myillusionsgone



Series: said, "i'm fine," but it wasn't true [11]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M, Hanahaki Disease, bc lbr? an ice mage? in the fridge? nah son., canon divergent as in 'silver is not gray's father. never was his father. never will be his father', we also unfridge ladies today
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23434336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: Ever so often, those who start a journey together come home together, too. — Silver & Ur
Relationships: Silver Fullbuster/Ur
Series: said, "i'm fine," but it wasn't true [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623238
Kudos: 4





	1. it's blue, the feeling i've got

Clutching a hand of sand in her hand, she spat out salt water — coughing worse than ever before in her life (and she had been dying of the Flower Curse, last she remembered ). To cough now meant that she had lungs. That she had lungs meant a great many things, each too big to fully grasp. Shoving briny strands out of her face, she coughed again and then, she took inventory of all that was around her. There was the sun, burning in her eyes and blinding her as on her skin, salt water dried. These impressions were benign and _small_ , but they filled her with . . . happiness. _So_ , she was at a beach. She had never before been at a beach, and the absurdity of this thought made her giddy. 

She had not felt anything akin to giddiness in a very long time. Not since . . . not since before Ultear had fallen ill. A thought she set aside with great difficulty, but a thought she could not linger on now. It tended to devour her, to consume all there was to her and to spit her out tired and drained of all optimism. She would mourn, she would always mourn her daughter — but Ur knew that everything, even grief, had its time and place and it did not belong on a sunlit beach with the sun slowly crawling up in the sky. It was early, and she might have made a joke about always having been an early riser, would it not sound so weak in her own ears.

 _Ultear_ , she thought, would have liked this place. It was peaceful, the beach stretching on further than her eyes could reach. And there were seashells, quite a lot of them, some stuck between her toes. Lyon and Gray, too, would have liked this place, she added as she ran a hand through salt-crusted hair, rubbing some of the salt off her brow. It would have been . . . she wished she could have taken the three of them to this place, wished she could have waded in the ocean before it had ever been the only home she had known for what had felt like eternities.

Another thought she had to set aside for later — she did not know how long it had been since she had last been whole. She neither knew how long it had been since she had collapsed in the institute's lobby, nor did she know how long it had been since she . . . had bid her students goodbye. The ocean did not care how many moons, how many years passed ashore; it was eternal, had been there before everything had begun and would be still there after everything had come to an end.

She knew the ocean well, now. Had learnt its language, spoken in mumbles. It had been a subtle presence, ghosting at the edges of her conscience. Sometimes, she had dreamt. Or had she recalled memories that were not her own? She had felt peace, most of the time. She had felt as if she was cradled in a mother's arms, shielded against all evil. She remembered thinking that if this was death, she finally understood why the church preached it to be the final step of a dance that encompassed all of life. She remembered thinking that if death was this peaceful, Ultear had finally free of the suffering her illness brought. She had been able to let go, slowly. She had been able to let her daughter rest instead of carrying her body and her empty grave on her shoulders.

But it had not been death. It had been its . . . opposite. It had been resurrection.

Then, she crashed headfirst into another thought, one that was ridiculously _base_ in comparison. **Clothes**. She halted, her gaze aimlessly wandering over her surroundings, searching for something she could wear. It truly had been too long since she had had a clear thought if this puzzled her, but almost, she would have forgotten the necessity — where she had been, there had been no need for these things. There had only been her, the occasional thought and, of course, the Emerals that had brushed past her in the darkest depths of the ocean.

 **(** She had not believed they even _existed_ , before. Now, she did, had heard their haunting songs and had clung to their melodies to stay sane. **)**

Always the pragmatic, she forced herself to stand, forced herself to ignore her legs mumbled protest. To her surprise, there were **two** of them despite her remembering clearly that one had been torn away. They were not used to _anything_ like this, not anymore. Neither was she. Her first steps made her feel like a toddler — clumsy and insecure, but she made it to the neat rows of tiny sheds, painted in all sorts of colours. Though she had never known their proper name (if they had one, that was), their mere presence told her that this was a beach where rich people came to swim.

It made her feel _marginally_ better as she reached to pull magic from her hands, magic she needed to forge a key. That her magic responded too quickly, too easily was an annoyance in the making, but so was the fact that it took her eleven attempts before she got the key right.

Still, she did smile as the door opened and she saw the bounty she was about to reap. She would not take more than she needed, she assuaged the part of her conscience that was wary, but she did need clothes, money and shoes. She would leave them their badly hidden designer sunglasses, though it struck her as very irresponsible to leave them there in the first place.

She was making excuses for herself, excuses that were _utterly trivial_ right now, she reminded herself as she rubbed off as much salt as she could from her skin. There were things in life that were . . . bigger than the question who the clothes she sifted through belonged to, she thought as she picked a flowery top and a equally floral skirt with a matching hat — whoever owned this clothes had a truly _frightening_ love for hibiscus flowers.

She did not need a mirror to know that her outfit made her look ridiculous, but though she had found more money than first anticipated, she would have to wait for a bit before she would trade these clothes for something that was more her style, something like a leather jacket and proper boots. But it would do, for now. There was no one around who could laugh at her, there were even fewer people whose opinions she valued so much that she would care what they thought about her summery look. Though was it even summer, she wondered. The absence of people, the emptiness of the vast beach made her doubt it, but it was of little consequence for her anyway.

The weather and its temperature did not matter to her, had not since she had been younger. It was a comforting thought as she shoved whatever necessities she could find into a bright pink shopper and slipped into a pair of flip flops that would have to do for the time being. All of this was far from ideal, but — it would have to do. All she expected of this was that it would function long enough for her to get home, to return to her cottage where (if fate had shown her any kindness) she would be able to find her own things, likely covered in dust but still there.

A thought that struck her as she stumbled away from the sheds and towards the treeline that was calling her with promises of shade and that almost made her trip down the little hill was _did the world miss me as much as I missed it?_ But the truth was the question that slumbered beneath, the question she should know better than to prod at.

Time had, as surprising as this sounded, healed some of her wounds. Or rather: it had shown her how unimportant they were in the greater scheme of things. Her broken heart, the hurt she had never allowed to matter, to truly matter — it had not left her. But it was a manageable pain, was not a storm that overwhelmed her.

And this was the truth she had not realised before and that resting between her ribs now: she had loved and she still loved — and this was all right. To have loved, even if it had not been the happy ending most would wish for, was precious in its own right. Her love had been true, always, and it had been answered in kind. It would not absolve her of the violets that grew and festered in her lungs.

(Even now, they were still there, having fallen from the cracks within her heart.)

But there was peace in this acceptance, and there was healing in it, too. She had loved, and she had been loved. And it was all right for her to miss him still, now. To miss her partner, to miss someone who half of the pain she carried belonged to, because Ultear had been his daughter, too.

She was allowed to love him still, _ever faithful_. His goodbye still hurt her soul, but it had been a long, long time since. She had been angry, she had been sad, and now it was her choice to miss him, to wish to see him again. Amidst cornflowers of ice, she had once promised him her heart. Amidst violets, she would keep her promise.

Looking once more at the sea that softly rippled behind her, the sunlight glinting on the gentle waves, Ur straightened her shoulders and set her eyes on the endless, _endless_ land stretching out in front of her. She had been born anew amidst salt and sunlight, but she was not made of this. She was a woman of spruce trees and stone, overgrown with moss and violets.


	2. all's well that ends well to end up with you

He did not find her; he was the one who was found. Strange how this seemed to become a theme in his life, right? Once upon a time, he would have called himself unmissable and no one would make the effort to look for someone who was not even missed, but life had a strange little way about proving him wrong whenever he expected it least, whenever he was as close to being certain as he could come. But, to take it from the top: first, dawn found him sitting on a rock in the middle of mountainous nowhere, breathing steadily through unobstructed airways and missing the flowers that had taken up residence in his lungs. He knew, this was all sorts of wrong, he was not meant to miss something others called a  _ Beautiful Death _ , but neither was he supposed to miss her and he had been missing her for years. (He had never been good at doing what he was supposed to do, in the end. ) There were flowers growing around him, stubbornly pushing through the cracks and reaching for the sun with eager hands, but they did not smell as sweet as the ones that had grown in his lungs.

The birds found him, too — singing cheerfully from their hiding places in the woods below — and he almost smiled. No birds had sung within the cube the demons had called their home. He might not have noticed it at the time, but he must have missed the normality of it. He had stopped believing in miracles a long time ago, perhaps around the same time when he had accepted that the role assigned to him was the role of the villain. Villains did not win and they were not granted miracles.

And yet, there were no other words he knew to describe the sight of her, standing at the edge of the forest, just out of his immediate reach. It was something that took him aback, that made him afraid to blink lest she would vanish, turning out to be a trick his mind was playing on him. Missing her had not been easy, but it had become a familiar pain, a dull ache over the years. Regret was what had been a twisting knife in his guts, love had never hurt him the same way.

He knew — she could be a ghost, a spectre that had come to haunt him. An illusion, crafted by a mage to send him through hell once more. But she was  _ walking _ towards him, her steps shaky as if she was a newborn foal that had not yet learnt how to operate its legs. She had lost a leg fighting Deliora, he had heard, but this was information very few were privy to. If she was not real (a thought he could hardly bear to think), she was . . . she was a  _ perfect _ copy. Sweet Saints, she smelled as if her entire being had been permeated by brine, but there was the familiar note of spruce as well.

“Hey, love,” she greeted, her voice rough as it rumbled over the words, sounding as if there was gravel between her vocal chords. Gravel or  _ salt _ , he corrected himself. “I'm back.”

He had not expected her to walk out of the woods, but when had he ever? She had always had a way of sneaking up on him, of making her way past his defenses that left him unaware that the fortress he called his heart had been breached.

Shifting towards her, he smiled. “Not a minute too early but not too late either, as always,” he responded quietly as he watched her with guarded eyes, wary that she might dissipate into smoke, wary that she might be the first sign of waning sanity. 

“It  _ was _ difficult, putting myself back together,” she said and her voice was  _ much _ softer as she looked down at her hands before tracing the scar on her face that looked as if she was made of broken marble. The comparison was lacking, of course — she did not deserve to be compared to brittle stone, not when she had pulled herself away from death's watery embrace.

He reached for her, his hand covering hers, his fingertips brushing gently over the scar as she leaned into his touch. “Miracles take time . . . and this one was worth the wait, I believe,” he replied as his other hand cupped the side of her face.

“ _ Miscalculations _ , you mean,” she grumbled as she rested her forehead against his chest, a soft sigh escaping her. “There is a mistake somewhere in how we wrote the spell, but I can’t be bothered to look at it ever again.”

Neither could he, truthfully. There were mistakes that had to be fixed, but Iced Shell . . . it was not a spell he ever  _ wanted _ to look again. He was not even sure if he could look at it without having to imagine how  **painful** it had to be to use it, to be torn apart by one’s own magic. He had known enough pain in his life to have a vague idea.

“I think even if we wanted to fix the spell, we couldn’t — unless you have notes left that we didn’t burn?” he asked as she shuddered. But this, this was something he could handle. It was easy to shrug off his cloak and wrap it around her as her legs gave in beneath her, just like it was easy to cradle her to his chest and press his lips against her hair. “I'll make this all right,” he promised softly as her hands clung to his wrist. “You need proper clothes, not beachwear.” 

It was much easier to focus on the things that could be solved immediately — getting her clothes, getting her food and maybe some medical attention. He had been resurrected a time or two, and it had not been easy to get used to. (Especially not the time when for  _ some reason _ , one leg had been shorter than the other when he had left the tube.) He knew how to handle this, how to keep stress levels down.

Ur blinked up at him as he set her down to pat himself down to figure out in which pocket he kept emergency snacks. “Calm down,” she commanded as she leaned against the rock he had been sitting on, earlier. “You make me nervous, and that's probably not good for me.”

He laughed, every bit as hysterical as he felt. He had never listened to anyone when they had told him how to make sure  _ his _ resurrections did not have any long-term effects, and he was almost regretting it now. No matter what his opinion on his old colleagues was, he could not deny that some of them had been quite competent at their respective jobs. “I'm sorry,” he told her left shoulder. “I'll — see that I can find you a more comfortable place? Don't be insulted, but you do look like a strong breeze could carry you away again.”

(And he was familiar enough with the idea of losing her to know that he could not do this again.)

Her hand, entwined with his, grounded him within moments. It was cold and steady and strong and a million other things he had always loved about it. “This is fine, love,” she said as she leaned in to press her (cold) lips against his jaw. “One step at a time. I think something less hibiscus-y would be a good start.”

He could do this. Probably. He was good with to-do lists, especially when he was nervous. “There's a little town down the mountain,” he said as he got up and stretched. “I'll get you something more your style, though I can't guarantee they'll have your brands. I  _ do  _ promise, however, that I won't get you a leather jacket from HeartKreuz.”

She laughed, dark eyes gleaming as she squeezed his hand. “I can forgive a lot, but I couldn't forgive  _ that _ ,” she said as she tugged on the cloak around her. “Please be back soon.”

He bent down to kiss her forehead, then her nose. “It won't take long,” he said quietly, “and then we'll get you into a bathtub and then you'll get something good to eat. Are you tired?” 

“Haven't felt the need to sleep since I woke up.”

“Then I'll buy you some chamomile tea as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy late b-day to myself i guess!


End file.
